The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (26 page)

He and Sam rein in their mounts and slow down
to a walking pace as they arrive at the Johnson farm.

“What are we doing here?” she asks Cory as he
halts.

He swings his leg over the neck of his horse
and reaches up to help her down. She takes the help without
argument because she isn’t sure she can get down without falling
flat on her face and then probably also getting kicked there by the
horse. His hands slide from her waist up the sides of her breasts
and into her armpits as she shimmies down.

“Thanks,” she mumbles and steps away from him
with a blush staining her cheeks.

Cory just smirks in an arrogant way that
makes Paige think he touched her inappropriately on purpose. She
glares at his back as he ties the horse’s reins to a fence post
next to Sam’s. Some of the Johnson kids are outside working, some
of the littler kids are playing and one of the daughters, Evie,
comes out to greet them. Paige has met her a few times and knows
that she is a widow. She also knows Cory danced with her quite a
few times at the wedding reception.

“What’s going on, guys?” Evie asks after they
all greet one another, her golden blonde hair tossing around in the
wind.

“Brought the beanpole here over to plink at
some groundhogs,” Cory answers for them.

Paige shoots him a disgusted look. Shoot
groundhogs? She hadn’t known this was the plan. She wants to go
back. Or throw up. That might be an option, too. She’s never shot
at animals like that before. Catching them in snares wasn’t the
same thing as sport shooting an innocent animal.

Apparently Evie doesn’t feel the same way
because she announces, “Oh, good!”

“Good?” Paige inquires as she re-ties her
hair back with her red bandana.

“Yeah, sure,” Evie explains. “We’re still
overrun. While my family and I were gone, the groundhogs took over
in the pastures. They are bothersome little creatures. If one of
the horses or cows steps in one of their burrows, then we could
have to put it down if the damage is bad like a broken ankle. It’s
happened.”

“Oh,” Paige says
simply
. She still doesn’t want to kill any of the
rodents. She really hopes Cory doesn’t want to cook and eat one
when they’ve finished. Or perform some rite of passage ritual by
eating the heart or something equally disgusting. That prospect is
even more nauseating than killing one. She grimaces
hard.

“Gonna
work
on sighting in and acquiring a moving target today,” Cory
tells the other woman.

“Sounds like fun,” Evie says with a tinge of
sarcasm and a smile touching her blue eyes.

“Wanna’ join us?” Cory invites cordially and
even raises his dark, thick brows at the woman.

Paige isn’t sure how old Evie is, but she’s
pretty sure that this Johnson daughter is a bit older than Cory.
She laughs gaily at Cory’s invitation and then touches his arm with
affection clearly written on her features.

“Ha, maybe another time, Cory,” she replies
with a smile. “I’m working on making apple cider vinegar with my
sister. I’ll send some over for Simon later.”

“Why?” Sam asks as she takes a rifle from its
scabbard on Cory’s horse.

“Uh… I’m not sure actually,” Evie says with
another smile. “He mentioned that he’d take a quart when we made
it. Something about using it for some kind of new experimental
medicine something or other. I don’t know. He usually loses me when
he starts on those herbs and stuff.”

“You aren’t the only one,” Cory remarks and
grins.

The way these two are acting makes Paige
suspicious of what could be going on between them or what could’ve
happened in their past together. Are they a thing, a couple, or
whatever people are calling it these days? She’s not sure, but
there is a lot of open smiling, grinning and, on Evie’s part,
touching. Perhaps when he leaves at night he is visiting this
woman, this lovely widow.

“Catch up with me before you leave and I’ll
give you a quart or two, depending on what he wants. He said that
you guys make apple cider vinegar, too, but he wants to try ours
because our apple orchard has different trees in it,” she says
while shrugging her slim shoulders.

Evie is much shorter than her, probably by a
good four or five inches. She is also curvy, nothing like her.
Paige feels graceless suddenly and turns to retrieve her own gun
from its scabbard. The three of them continue to talk for a few
moments before Cory announces that they should get to it since he
doesn’t want to be away from the farm for long because Doc and
Kelly are going somewhere to work on a gas line. Paige just offers
a half grin and a wave to Evie before following Sam and Cory into
the forestry of trees at the edge of the Johnson farm, which isn’t
much different than the McClane farm other than the house sits
practically right on the road. They have rolling hills of tillable
ground and a forest, but more grazing acreage than the McClane
spread, according to Sam.

They hike a short distance into the woods
where Cory instructs them to stop.

“Let’s first see what you can do, all right?”
he says.

“Not much,” Paige mumbles. “Don’t get your
hopes up.”

Cory just chuckles, “Well, we know you’re
good at running, but this family isn’t made up of runners. And you
aren’t going to be able to run away from every situation.”

Sam sits on a fallen log and takes out
her
sketch pad
and art supplies.
Her rifle leans against the log near her leg.

“I can’t shoot well at all. I’m definitely
better at evasion than sniping people. This is going to be a waste
of your time,” Paige adds with criticism.

“Oh, don’t believe her, Cory,” Sam calls over
without looking up. “She’s more lethal than she says. I’ve seen her
handiwork.”

Paige knows that Samantha is referring to the
night the farm was attacked, but she doesn’t have the heart to tell
her new friend that most of her kills were likely a combination of
blind luck and accidental kill shots. She knows she sucks.

“We’ll see,” Cory says softly as he loads the
rifle for her. “You know this part, right?”

“Sort of,” she replies honestly.

“See here?” he asks, pointing with his dirty
index finger to a bullet like a smart aleck. “Bullet. Goes in
here.”

Paige has to bite back a nasty
retort.
Instead,
she gives him a
look that lets him know that he isn’t funny.

“This is a seven by six-two Mauser.
Doc’s
actually
. He
likes

the old, historical rifles. When we’re
in the field, we’ll be using the military rifles, but not your
brother. He usually carries a sniper rifle. He’s the best with the
long range shots, so he’s normally our cover. I
carry
an M16, John, too. Sometimes Kelly
carries
a Garand- that’s a high power
old rifle, a real shit-kicker, or an M4.”

She just nods. Paige has no idea what all
these numbers and letters mean anyway.

“What will I carry? I’ve never done that
before,” she tells him nervously and wipes her sweaty hands on her
pants. “I usually just went with nothing.”

Cory’s eyes jump to hers, the brown depths
express a deep concern. “Really? You didn’t have a gun?”

Paige shakes her head and explains,
“No, not usually. A couple times, but we didn’t have any more
bullet
thingys
, so what would’ve
been the point? I had a knife. It broke when I was trying to cut
wood with it, though. I just got really good at sneaking and
avoiding people and…”

She pauses, shrugs, and bites her lower
lip.

“What?” he asks.

“I just outran them if they saw me,” she
answers.

Cory’s left eyebrow lifts with doubt. Then he
frowns. He clearly doesn’t like her answer, but it’s the truth,
nonetheless.

“That’s insane,” he says tersely and goes
back to loading the rifle. “We won’t be doing that. You’ll listen
to me. You’ll learn from me. And when we’re in the field, you will
carry a weapon.”

“I will have a weapon. The same one I had
before, my feet,” she grumbles at the rude, authoritative tone in
his voice and the mandate.

Cory’s gaze slides impatiently to hers and he
scowls. It’s enough to make Paige look away.

He says firmly, “We
won’t
be running.”

“Fine,” she says quietly.

“Good, let’s get started. I’ll let you shoot
a few and then you can reload it yourself,” he offers.

He hands her the heavy rifle, which feels
like it weighs forty pounds.

“See the bolt here? This is what will
load a round into the chamber.
A rifle
doesn’t shoot unless the bullet thingy goes into the barrel,”
he replies with a snarky wit.

“Ha-ha,” she says and
shoots
him a grimace.

“Put it up
to
your shoulder,” he says and stands behind her.
“Press it snuggly to it. That’s it. We’re not gonna cowboy shoot
this thing, you know, from the hip? That only works in movies.
Don’t ever do that, unless you want one of us to make fun of you.
Your weapon always goes
against
your shoulder.”

Cory helps her get it adjusted, and
Paige tries not to think about him pressed against the back of her.
His left arm slides to the end of her own, and he helps her
to
push
the rifle a little higher
into the air.

“This is the bolt,” he says and takes her
right hand into his own.

His hot breath hits her neck where the
bandana has her hair concealed, exposing bare skin. His grip is
sure and firm as he uses her hand to slide the bolt back and then
forward again.

Cory steps back and says, “See that tree over
there across the field? The one that’s down partway with the red
leaves?”

Paige nods and says, “Yes.”

“Let’s just see if you can hit the
trunk, anywhere. Doesn’t matter, just try to
hit
it.”

“That’s a really long way,” Paige
observes as she stares down the barrel of the rifle. The tree he
speaks of is across
a broad
meadow sprinkled with white daisies.

“It’s a
really
good
gun, so you’re in luck,” he remarks with a smile
touching his voice. “Here, wait.”

He presses tiny orange sponges into her
ears.

“Don’t want you to lose your hearing,” he
says.

“What about you?”

“I’m already deaf… and mostly dumb, so
we’re good,” he
self-criticizes
.

“I could’ve told you that,” she whispers.

“Take a breath,” he says behind her.
“Let it half out. Squeeze gently. She’ll bark, but you can
handle
‘er
.”

Paige’s eyes widen. She squeezes one
eye closed, tries to take aim, and
squeezes
. Total miss. And the gun is like a cannon
going off not a bark as
he
’d
called it.

Cory tells her to do it again and she does
and misses once again. This goes on two more times before her
frustration gets the best of her.

“Damn it!” she hisses as Cory takes the rifle
from her.

“Houston, we’ve got a problem,” he jokes.

Paige fails to find the humor and smashes her
hands onto her hips impatiently.

“I told you I suck,” she retorts.

“No, you don’t. But if I’m right- and I
usually am- you are left-eye dominant trying to shoot right-eye
dominant.”

She tries not to roll her eyes at his
machismo.

“What’s that mean?” she asks.

Sam, who is her
normal
quiet, tiny self, pipes up and says, “You’re
closing the wrong eye. That’s why you aren’t hitting
anything.”

Then she goes right back to whatever she’s
drawing. She’s always in her own little world, a place she likes to
escape to where the outside world can’t reach her.

“Here,” Cory says and takes the rifle from
her and pulls out the string-attached ear plugs. “Come over here
for a second, Paige.”

His deep voice is commanding and the sound of
her name coming from him has a strange effect on her insides. He
leads her toward the edge of the woods facing the Johnson farm.

“See the rooster on that weather vane on
their barn, the smaller barn?” he asks

“Yes,” Paige answers with confusion as he
points into the distance. Paige isn’t sure how he can wear nothing
but a short-sleeved shirt while she has on a long-sleeved sweater
and a jacket. The fall air is crisp this morning.

“Now, I’m gonna hold my hands in a circle in
front of your face.”

Paige gives him a look of perplexed
resistance and steps back. He grins and steps closer and holds his
hands about a foot in front of her, forming his fingertips into a
circle.

“Now close your right eye,” he orders.

She gives him another look. Cory just raises
his eyebrows with impatience, so she gives in.

“Still see it?”

“Yes,” Paige answers.

“Now the left,” he says.

“Wait, it moved,” she exclaims with
surprise.

“Do it again,” he says and they perform the
task once more.

“It disappeared again,” Paige says with a
furrow of her light brows.

“Ok, well, now we know what the problem is,”
he says and takes her arm, leading her back to where he rested the
rifle against the tree.

“I suck? Like I tried to tell you?”